] The suicide bombs, the roadside bombs, the ambushes,
] kidnappings, and assassinations -- all these assaults on
] Iraqis and foreigners show a nation in violent disorder.
] This continuing mayhem, which casts doubt on the
] possibility of holding elections for an Iraqi National
] Assembly in January 2005, also casts light on the
] unmistakable failures of the Bush administration's
] efforts at peacemaking and nation-building in postwar
] Iraq.
]
] Even Republican senators at a Senate Foreign Relation
] Committee hearing Wednesday scored the administration.
] "Our committee heard blindly optimistic people from the
] administration prior to the war and people outside the
] administration -- what I call the `dancing in the street
] crowd' -- that we just simply will be greeted with open
] arms," said the committee's chairman, Richard Lugar of
] Indiana. "The nonsense of all that is apparent. The lack
] of planning is apparent." Lugar's committee was
] addressing the administration's inexcusable failure thus
] far to spend more than 6 percent of the $18.4 billion
] appropriated for reconstruction in Iraq. Because of the
] same lack of planning that Lugar lamented, the
] administration is now asking to shift more than $3
] billion from those reconstruction funds to pay for the
] training of badly needed Iraqi security forces.
]
] This need, Lugar noted, was known to the administration
] last July. Yet no request to transfer funds has been
] made until now.

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